


You Drew Stars Around My Scars

by cpt_winniethepooh



Series: Taylor Swift Songfics 'Verse [3]
Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF Peggy Carter, Canon Divergence - Captain America: The First Avenger, Canon Divergence - Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, M/M, Melancholy, Old Peggy Carter, POV Peggy Carter, POV character death, Songfic, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Gets a Hug, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, happy stucky ending, righteous steve rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:15:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27602654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cpt_winniethepooh/pseuds/cpt_winniethepooh
Summary: Peggy Carter was underestimated just as much as Steve Rogers was; they, however, understood each other.She also knew that she will always be second for Steve to saving the world and fighting for freedom.When Steve comes back to Peggy a lifetime later, she sees that he struggles to find happiness in his life.Until he meets one James Barnes, and Peggy can finally stop worrying about Steve.A Stucky Bingo fill for the prompt 'Peggy Carter'.Part of my Taylor Swift songfic series and written for 'Cardigan'; can work as a standalone if you accept that Bucky and Steve only meet in the 21st century.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Peggy Carter/Daniel Sousa, Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers
Series: Taylor Swift Songfics 'Verse [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1322519
Kudos: 39
Collections: Stucky Bingo 2020





	You Drew Stars Around My Scars

**Author's Note:**

> This fic can probably work as a standalone if you accept that Bucky and Steve only meet in the 21st century. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯  
> If considered within the series, it goes with [_Reputation ch12_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17840105/chapters/42690314) and is set after [_I'm doing better than I ever was_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18371012). 
> 
> Inspired by "Cardigan" from Taylor Swift - something about that song just made me think of Peggy losing Steve and getting Steve back but not really, and then this happened ^^  
> Written for the A1 square of my Stucky Bingo card, 'Peggy Carter'
> 
> (Also I have a full-on _Lover_ novel in the editing process, so stay tuned!)
> 
> More info about the MCD tag in the end notes if you don't mind spoilers!

"You don't know what you're doing," they tell Peggy. Their faces change, from her mother to her tutors to old men in grey suits, and they are all certain that they have Peggy figured out. She's young, and pretty, and feminine; therefore, she can't be intelligent or sharp or crafty. 

Peggy's been hearing the same thing since she's been a little girl, and although she doesn't want to let it, they do wear her down. Eventually, she is ready to get married and raise children and bake cookies, and Fred seems a good enough choice. 

It takes Michael to die for her to wake up and remember that there is nothing ludicrous about her dreams and desires. He was the only one who believed in her and told her to listen to herself, not others. The only one that told her that she knew what she was doing.

And so she did, and does. No matter what other people – usually older men in grey suits – tell her. 

She has better credentials than anybody else, and the need is great enough for Col. Philips to employ her in the SSR. Her lipstick is always on point, not a hair out of place, and she can outwalk and outrun all of her colleagues even in high heels, because she knows she needs to present as perfect to be taken half as seriously as the men around her. 

The men see her as less than and the women see her as competition, someone that would try to get the most decorated war heroes for herself. 

She goes home alone each and every night and reminds herself that no matter how much she is mocked, ridiculed or despised, she is fighting for something bigger than herself. Because that is the right thing to do and that's what she needs to do to live in peace with herself. She does not need kids or a family. 

Her loneliness is broken by one Steve Rogers.

Not Captain America. All the podcasts and books and comics and films and series and essays get that wrong. She meets Steve Rogers _years_ before Captain America is even born, and it's hard to describe how she feels with him – there is a connection there, right from the very beginning. 

Peggy sees herself in him, and that never goes away. Steve is mocked and ridiculed and despised by his peers for being small and weak and sickly, for being _less than_. That, by itself, is not that out of the ordinary, but Steve doesn't react with violence or coldness. He breaks the cycle by knowing what he's fighting for and he keeps standing up, and up, and up, no matter how many times he is pushed around.

He is smart but never feels threatened by her smarts. He is strong but never tries to make her feel weak. He is an idiot, but the kind that Peggy can't help but fall in love with. 

For the first time in a long while Peggy feels appreciated – a thing she told herself she didn't want. Yet when it happens, it's a warm hug, it's her favorite perfume, it's the feeling of home even in the middle of a warzone. And Peggy never wants to leave it behind.

Steve is a man Peggy would follow to the end of the Earth. If someone can make the world a better place, it's him and nobody else. When Colonel Philips or Senator Brandt look at Steve, they see a dumb instrument to be used. A hammer to hit with: dumb, one-purpose, bland. They don't see the fire in his heart, they don't understand where he's coming from and that nothing they do will ever make Steve follow orders and be a good little soldier. They try; God, but they try to break him in. They don't know him like Peggy does, they don't know that Steve will never budge. 

Peggy knows that and therefore also knows that Steve can never be truly hers. 

As they dance around each other, and then somehow tumble together into bed, she tells herself that this is enough. To understand Steve better than anybody is a privilege she wouldn't trade for anything, even if they have to sneak around to be together and steal kisses in the dark and pretend that they haven't been shagging all night in front of their superior officers.

Steve's hands are big on her body, they engulf her waist, and she has never felt worship before until she feels his kisses. He smears her lipstick and loves the smudge it leaves; she tastes the brandy on his breath and sees the light glimmer in his eyes even in the middle of the night. 

She tells herself that this is enough, even though she wants more. _Now_ she wants those kids to raise, and that family, and she wants it with _him_ , and of course, the irony is that she can't have it.

No matter how she feels, Steve is never truly hers. Steve belongs to more than her; he belongs to everyone, to the whole world, even before he becomes Captain America. He is simply too noble, too righteous and too stupid to not give himself up for the cause. He doesn't chase skirts, but he courts someone even more than he courts Peggy, and that someone is Freedom, and Peggy knows she can't compete with her. 

She isn't even sure she wants to. She loves Steve for who he is and she doesn't want to change him. 

She is told she doesn't understand her place in this war, and that her inferior feelings are an invalid distraction. She would laugh at them, all these older men in grey suits, because what do they know? Certainly not her or Steve, because if they did, they would understand that Steve will not be disloyal to his commitment to freedom. 

She doesn't laugh. She bears the comments and the dismay, and contents herself with the way Steve's fingers draw figures on her wrists, and the way they sing along to the wireless on leave, and memorizes his eyes for the hundredth time.

There is no surprise when Steve says he will put the Valkyrie down. Peggy knew that this day would come, that Steve would leave her for something bigger, and she still can't fault him. 

She doesn't even blame herself; she could have said no all those years ago, and she didn't. She wouldn't, now, either.

She still begs for him not to, because she wants to be able to live with herself, and she has to try. 

She doesn't succeed.

Her heart starts to bleed when only static answers her call and doesn't stop. She hoped that the inevitability would dull her, but every breath hurts, every thought stings, every beat of her heart reminds her that Steve's doesn't. 

She tries to wash her anguish with work, but the war is soon won – _Steve never sees it, never sees the celebration, never shares the joy_ – and she is needed even less than before.

She almost lets them get to her. "You don't know what you're doing" becomes "You don't do anything useful. You are just Cap's girl." 

She doesn't want to prove them wrong to honour Steve's memory. She doesn't want to prove them wrong at all. But, eventually, she does, by fighting for a better world, not only future, but present, where old men in grey suits don't get to order her to get coffee. Instead, it's her who's in charge. She builds SHIELD from the SSR, and helps win the Cold War, and watches as they land on the Moon, and learns to use new technology as she still dresses impeccably and can outrun her colleagues in stilettos even on cobblestones. 

The sorrow goes with her everywhere. She mistakes a familiar silhouette for Steve in the store; she waits for him at the Stork Club at many Saturdays, not necessarily because she believes he will be there, but because her heart aches less as she does so; she walks around Brooklyn, looking for places Steve offhandedly mentioned to her for the same reason.

Losing him reminds her that she wants to be happy. She stops denying that she'd like to make her own family just as she makes her way, and marries Daniel, and has wonderful children with him. She does love him, even if not the same way she loves Steve; but she believes that that kind of love doesn't happen more than once in a life, if at all. 

She writes her own story and writes history too, yet can't stop her heart hoping for him to return.

He does; long after she's left SHIELD and long after Daniel's death, when she's one in many at a nursing home. He brings flowers and stands on the threshold of her door awkwardly, and her heart soars.

"Steve," she says. "You came back." 

The nurses don't believe it's Cap, at first, but she can't be fooled. She may be old and somewhat senile, but Steve Rogers, she'd recognize anywhere. She can't forget him, not when he weighed on her mind every single day of her life. 

"I can't leave my best girl behind," he says and she nods – she should have known.

  
  
  
  


_At her funeral, Steve says that Peggy formed most of his life but he was only a chapter at hers. She disagrees quietly; but she does concede to planting your feet and telling the world to move. She's done that all her life, after all._

_Steve visits her grave often, bringing flowers and melancholic drawings. Overdramatic, like always, and she is sorry for him. She, at least, lived her life, but Steve seems even more distant from the land of the living than she is._

_He also murmurs stories to her as he puts his hand on her headstone._

_"I read it somewhere, and I think I know how it feels," he says. "I always felt like I was a used piece of clothing, but you made me feel like I was your favorite."_

_They are almost always sad stories, and Peggy is rolling in her grave._

_She thinks him and Sharon would make a great couple; Sharon's always been her favorite niece. Instead, one of the happy stories he shares is how he got Sharon and Natasha together, and if Peggy still had a corporeal form, she would shoot him again for being such a martyr._

_Then, something changes. One early autumn day Steve comes, not with white lilies as usual, but with red and crimson roses alongside white gladioli._

_"I met someone," he says quietly, and doesn't tell her headstone more, but his sketches are of pale blue eyes and a prosthetic arm, and she is intrigued._

_She also meets that someone late in the fall, when the leaves provide a colorful carpet in the cemetery and the wind calls for knitted scarves._

_“We wouldn't have met, without her," James 'Bucky' Barnes says on Steve's arms, and looks at Steve with an expression Peggy is familiar with from the mirror. I would follow him to the end of the world, it says. "I'm sorry you lost her."_

_What's new is how Steve looks back at him. Not like he's ready to follow him, but like he maybe won't march to the end of the world, for once._

_Steve comes back less and less often. Each time he does, he seems lighter on his feet and less pale than before. Not long after Christmas, when everything is covered in a crispy layer of snow, he smiles at her grave for the first time since the funeral._

_"I loved you, Peggy," he says when he kneels in front of her headstone. "Lord knows I loved you, but I couldn't settle then. But now, I found someone, and I don't want to let him go."_

_He pulls his dog tags out from under his scarf – except they aren't his._

_"I'm so happy I found him," he whispers. "And I'm not gonna let go. Not this time. Peggy, I'm getting married."_

_Peggy sighs, and hopes that Steve feels it – now, she, too, can rest in peace._

**Author's Note:**

> Deaths in question: Steve "dies" and Peggy does grieve him; then Steve comes back and Peggy dies, however, she still has thoughts beyond the grave and watches over Steve. Nothing is graphic or (imho) that tragic.


End file.
